Tag Archives: rejection

I need a game-changer

I haven’t had a submission accepted since May.

I haven’t written anything new since September. I’ve started a few things, but they keep petering out on me, getting to about 500 words and then sitting there for weeks at a time.

I am in a slump. I’m getting taken down in the most expected way: I’m using my lack of acceptance letters as an excuse not to work as hard on my writing as I have been. I’ve got a couple of submissions out, I tell myself, and they’ll be out there for awhile, so why keep creating more work?

The answer is, of course, pretty simple: Because the more work I have, the more work I can have out for submissions, and the better chance I have of keeping myself motivated and on people’s radar. Last year I had a three-month run of publications. One in May, one in June, and one in July, and I saw some improvement to the blog stats, and it was fun. When I launched 12 Months of Trying, I saw some improvement again. I Should Get a Free Dog continues to sell, though I still can’t tell you why, and I want to continue to build myself as a writer people want to read, but I’m running out of steam.

I need a game-changer. I need an acceptance letter or a big sale or even just a new idea that’ll make it beyond 500 words. It’s strange to be in a slump, and I don’t like it at all. I want to work hard and push forward and keep putting out work, but my motivation is slipping away. I wonder if where I am is where some people just throw up their hands and call it a day. They’ve made an effort, and now that effort is starting to feel like too much, and so they figure they’ve done well enough and close up shop. That won’t be me. I refuse to let it be me. But I’m still trying to figure out how to work my way out of where I am now. There’s plenty of behind-the-scenes work I could do to keep myself busy until my brain clicks back into writing mode, but I know I need more than that. I think it may be time to completely re-evaluate how I’m writing and figure out my plan from the bottom up.

I’ll report back as I figure it out. Any tips, tricks, or general advice you’d like to throw my way is more than welcome.

Why I mention but don’t detail my rejections.

On Twitter the other day someone linked to an excellent blog post about how writing is a business and how that should always be remembered. I can’t–of course–find the link now, but parts of it matched up with a post I wrote awhile back, and there was a comment that caught my eye, talking about how to handle rejection. I’ve received two rejections this week, and I know I tweeted about at least one of them.

I always mention my rejections, but I don’t go into detail about them. There’s a reason for both of these things. I mention my rejections because rejection is about 95% of the business. I haven’t gotten an acceptance note since May. My overall average for acceptance on Duotrope is 5.88%. I am doing slightly better than a few people I know and doing slightly worse than I was six months ago when I was at about 7%. Not talking about rejections as a writer would be like not talking about flat tires as a tow truck driver; they are an expected part of the job. They are, in fact, sort of boring after awhile, but I mention every rejection I get. I don’t do it because I think it’s fascinating but because I want to make my work as a writer as transparent as possible. I think our industry is incredibly romanticized and part of that is due to the fact that most writers don’t like to admit their acceptance/rejection ratio. I own up to mine in hopes of shedding some much-needed light on what it takes to be a writer. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Writing is more than art. Writing is work, and a good chunk of that work (as I detailed here) goes into waiting to find out if you’re in or not. Pretending like you weren’t waiting to hear back and pretending like it doesn’t matter what you heard back is bunk. You are waiting, and it does matter. An acceptance means you can take a breath and let someone else take over a bit of the work in terms of promoting you. A rejection means you have to start poking for flaws in your work and finding a new market. One takes work off your hands, and the other gives you more work to do, and writers seem deathly afraid to admit that they’ve had a rejection, let alone the work that follows to get that story/poem/what have you out again.

So, I mention my rejections because they are part of my job, but I don’t make any guesses to why I was rejected, and there’s a good reason for that: I don’t know. I have had a single market that sent back notes with my piece, and even from their notes I couldn’t pinpoint exactly why I was turned down. Four editors sent notes, and every single one of them had different notes. If they’d all said the same thing, I could have concluded that was why the story was rejected, but they all had different notes, so I have no idea what the dealbreaker was.

That one market aside, I have never gotten notes for a rejected piece. In fact, I’ve never even gotten a personalized rejection. Every rejection I’ve gotten has been the very standard, “No, thank you. Best of luck,” rejection that is the staple in every market. While I certainly take time in the post-rejection editing process to guess at what didn’t work, I don’t know. Maybe they didn’t like my characters. Maybe they didn’t like my title. Maybe they had a dozen stories similar to mine. Maybe they had no stories similar to mine. Maybe they want someone with a bigger following. Maybe they want someone who’s never published a thing. I could make this list for hours, but it’s pointless. I don’t know why I get rejected, so I don’t make guesses. Making guesses wastes time I could be using to edit and find new markets and write new stories. It’s an empty activity of useless hypothetical situations.

Here’s what I know: I write. I edit. I submit. Occasionally, I get a piece accepted. The mass majority of the time, I get rejected. I have two options in this scenario: I can edit my work and try again, or I can sit and twiddle my thumbs and think a series of useless thoughts that won’t actually lead to any answers. One of these options keeps me in the game, the other keeps me out of it. I have two pieces out for consideration, one piece recently self-published, a series of tiny poems to combine into something coherent, a half-dozen short story ideas to work out, the first seven chapters of a novel to continue on, and the first 2700 words of a novel that was supposed to be a short story. Guess which option I choose.

The difference in a rejection from a small market vs a big market

Stationary.

I got my rejection letter from The Atlantic today. It was a mailed submission, so they sent back my stamped envelope and a little note that said I’d been rejected. My feelings on the matter? Exactly the same as every other rejection I’ve had. “Well, guess I’ll be going over that one with a fine-tooth comb again and doing some market hunting this weekend.”

I didn’t expect it to feel different. A rejection is a rejection. They come in a lot more frequently than acceptance letters, and I’ve never had one that hasn’t been polite and short.

This one is just polite and short on well-designed stationary.

If you’re thinking of submitting to a major market, do it. The worst they can do is turn you down on a classy piece of paper. Anyone needs me, I’ll be editing.